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Here's the final, and my favourite, hold in my series of 4 (Labyrinthitis, The Domain of the Grinfidel, The Hunt for the Grinfidel).
Here the story is greatly expanded and concluded. There are alternate endings and paths to take, many secrets, a bunch of characters, "The Slayer's Challenge", and much more.
You can play it without playing the previous 3 holds (a brief resume of what happened in them is given at the start), though, if you enjoyed this hold, you'll probably enjoy them too.
See if you can find what's behind the master door.
Thanks to Tim, TripleM and vAmpir for playtesting. Enjoy.

(Note: a few rooms have scripted speech and character actions. Speech is real time, while events are turn-based, so if you quickly rush through the room they'll get out of sync, which would look a bit dumb.)

Now that I'm here, I should say that this was an excellent hold. There were some very nice and unique puzzles in here, and I definitely recommend everyone to play it. I especially liked the 'cooperation' puzzles in the final level.

My only complaint - its the last one in the series! Will be looking forward to more holds

Argh! Why does it keep doing that to me? I know it didn't end the hold before, because I played through it to double check.
Have now updated it.
Thanks for playing through it again and pointing that out, there were another 4 rooms on that level not on architecture, so glad you did.
Not sure if I'll be making a new hold (there's a new level on architecture though, just as a small diversion). I spend way too much time making holds for my own good. Did you find, and pass, the master door?

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New to DROD? You may want to read this.
My Holds and Levels:

Hold of the Year and Technical Design Excellence in Concept Award Winner (2008)Advanced Concepts - I made the Goblins, Fegundos, Eyes and Potions levels
(Tutorials and Challenges involving specific DROD elements)

Just finished, and it is a worthy end of your series. I particulary liked the slayer challange. Perhaps not so dificult, but I like the idea of first exploring and then doing things in the right order.

Hold of the Year and Technical Design Excellence in Concept Award Winner (2008)Advanced Concepts - I made the Goblins, Fegundos, Eyes and Potions levels
(Tutorials and Challenges involving specific DROD elements)

I just downloaded the file and it imported fine for me (it did cause an assertion error, but that didn't prevent me from importing it). Try downloading (make sure you're not downloading from cache) and importing it again, and if that doesn't work, you could try exporting your player, deleting the hold, importing the hold, and re-importing your player. If that doesn't work, you may have to reinstall

Hold of the Year and Technical Design Excellence in Concept Award Winner (2008)Advanced Concepts - I made the Goblins, Fegundos, Eyes and Potions levels
(Tutorials and Challenges involving specific DROD elements)

quote:Jacob wrote:
I begin to see a pattern to the holds you're playing...
You've got 3 of mine still to go (I think)

Well, I thought I'd do the Grindfidel ones in sequence...seemed kind of logical.

I have downloaded in fact your others but haven't started them yet. Currently, I'm trying to solve Penthouse, Beethro Goes Fourth, and every so often I pop into Lost Temple or Perfection when I need a good dose of humility.

So many great holds, so little time!

Oh yeah...and I still have two secret rooms to solve in Journey to Rooted Hold. Someday...

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"Rings and knots of joy and grief, all interlaced and locking." --William Buck

Well sheesh, you should really focus on those JtRH secret rooms so you can see the Dreamplane, it's a huge level full of cool stuff (and even some extra puzzles that got chopped out of the main hold).

But I'm okay with you playing my holds too.

Game on,

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"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

quote:Oneiromancer wrote:
Well sheesh, you should really focus on those JtRH secret rooms so you can see the Dreamplane, it's a huge level full of cool stuff (and even some extra puzzles that got chopped out of the main hold).

But I'm okay with you playing my holds too.

Heh. Well, my two remaining JtRH secrets are the two hard (official Boston-area terminology: "wicked hahd") rooms on Level 22. I keep going back to them, but I can't ever seem to solve them. I'm sure I'll get them eventually...

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"Rings and knots of joy and grief, all interlaced and locking." --William Buck

There are demos available for both of them, either on the forum (sometimes) or by e-mail (I'm the "custodian" of the 1N 1E one, it seems like). So if you really want to, you can get it done.

Game on,

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"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

I've been playing through the Grinfidel series - how could one resist a hold called Labyrinthitis? - and enjoying each entry more and more. I thought the third one, Hunt for the Grinfidel, was the best, and then this one topped it.

Firstly, great Halph puzzles. It's a pity that he's now off-canon, because he allows for some unique puzzle elements. Return: 1S, in particular, had me stumped for some hours. Then Retribution: 7S used Halph's movement in a way I hadn't noticed before.

Second, a coherent style for each level. Rest had that relaxing outdoor style which is under-used (why should little pixellated rocks and bushes be relaxing? I have no idea). And The Ruined City was also a look I hadn't seen before - multi-room buildings, with wreckage and crumbly walls. Plus, sticking to the same monster types makes each level even more consistent. (Now I'm racking my brain as to whether there are queen roaches anywhere in the hold).

Thirdly, I like the level of difficulty. While there's a place for the pulling-hair-out holds, this hold was pitched at the right level for me - nothing had me delayed for too long, or was too trivial (Revolutions was easy but not tedious).

Last, a story isn't necessary, but when done well it ties the entire hold into more than a random collection of puzzles. The scripting is all solid, and none of the spelling/grammar made me cringe. I guess people voted for the third option given in Hunt...

The completion freak in me also loves all the secret stuff, especially complete secret levels.

Finally I finished the Trilogy! It was hours and hours of fun and frustration at times. The slayers revenge was veeery interesting, and of course, I went right ahead and killed the first roach on my first try. Curiously, the puzzle behind the master wall took me the looongest to figure out since I kept getting blocked in! Thanks for the fun!

OK I am now very frustrated! I have thoroughly enjoyed this hold - but I have only found one route through (presumably the easy one). Where oh where do I get to the other path? I'm sure it is staring me in the face but can I see it? Please help!

After enjoying Aurora's Palace so much I decided to check out another Jacob hold and began this one. I've conquered it and think it's a terrific hold. Good solid puzzles: some tricky, some sneaky, nothing impossibly difficult with a few very simple rooms thrown in and all fun. I'm usually not a fan of orb puzzles, but here they were my favourite rooms. Slayer's Challenge was my favourite level, which was a pleasant surprise, because once I realized what it was all about I thought I would find it incredibly frustrating. It was quite actually very satisfying to figure out the correct level path and -- since I like to make an attempt at optimization -- work out the "most efficient" room solve. There's a very creative twisty mind at work in this architect's head.

However I would really like to master this and have come up against a wall. Well, more like some stubborn blue gates.
(secreted for length and non-relevance)

Click here to view the secret text

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I noticed in the Architecture thread there was a similar issue, but I believe that was resolved since no one else seems to have this problem with the published hold, so I'm wondering what I'm missing. Here it my current state:

In Ruined City I've completed 1N, Entrance, 1S, 1N1E, 1E and 1S1E. These are the only rooms I can find that aren't blocked by a blue gate. There are blue gates in 1N, 1N1E (which I'm pretty sure I reach once I go through the blue gate in 1N) and 1S1E. They haven't dropped so I assume there must be another required room on this level somewhere, but I'm stumped as to where it might be. Feel free to PM me if the answer would contain spoilers. Any help is appreciated.

And mastered. I can't add much to what I wrote above except that the "hidden" levels are worth finding. There did seem to be a few rooms with unintended solutions, or maybe they were meant to be "gimmes", but they are balanced out by the few that had me completely flummoxed. Until I wasn't.

I must say that I felt the hold could have used a few more/better placed checkpoints, but luckily none of the rooms were so tedious that I really resented having to restart. Well, there might have been a couple of exceptions: yes, I'm looking at you RC:3S:1W. A room which also serves to remind one that while there might be a reason for everything Jacob puts in a room, sometimes the reason is to create a red herring, and the puzzle is to figure out which element is which.

Edit: Oops. Forgot to mention how much I enjoyed reading the scrolls in the master area that take you "behind the scenes" on this series. And thanks for the entertainment too; the Hamlet adlib made me giggle.[Last edited by noma at 08-05-2011 03:32 PM]